c
EMILY CARR
POOM
five
of cups
Show me.
(She is crying now.)
Show me.
(She is crying now.)
Poom the sky says.
The shadow of Gods hand huge on her shoulder… threw grief
across the verandah while you slept.
Meanwhile (to quote Freud): one perfect rose.
Lightning streams through the world like hair…
Cardinals & tomatoes: in a white forked flame.
Scraps of bright trumpet, clean knots of blue melody, the moon
bleeding in dreams of forest—.
Rises blind. Resets automatically.
To metabolism & panic.
+++
PAPERING OVER THE WALTZ IN HER LIFE
ace of cups
Moonshine the crickets bone.
A comet trespasses over a crater.
Niagara Falls fringed in virgin cornfield. Trembling in the bright
mysterious trees colloquial death so fine.
Everyones love has a problem. Whats yours.
Of emptiness: & birds.
Leaves going on & the grass being green.
Here it is the housecat, hunting early. An angel lap swimming at
the community pool—
Hope? a dead cat? a kiss that scorched my ribs off?
I cant quite remember
(mistaken as you are by the curve of a dactyl).
(This could be done simply by saying “wow!” or rolling one’s
eyes
& pointing? Or inhabit as a pattern already caught up again &
theres nothing you can do about it now—.
(Freedom depends on this: that you find an elegant pattern.)
(Fill it in!)
+++
A SYNCOPATED HALLUCINATION
four of swords
The violins hold a high fermata, release.
Seraphim fall like hawks. She feels as if she were meant to inherit
the earth. She has another drink from the styrofoam cup.
Perhaps Liberty writes on your greasestained napkin
understanding is.
In a sort of skyblue dress—that shows her shoulders.
Her arms are bright birds & barbed wire cross-stitched.
You lay your knife & fork across the white plate. You let yourself
down hand over hand.
(You move toward her cautiously unsolved.)
A bird is singing. The sun is somewhere down a gong in the
bushes. A cloud flings her skirt over a couple of palm trees.
Nothing would give up: even the dirt keeps breathing.
There will always she says be the danger/ of
two people
meeting, having split up because she has a taste for love & he for
sex—& each then wondering if they had made a mistake.
(It sounds very much like a waltz.)
None of this/ the
girl says is
easy—. You hold between your hands the black hills of her
mind. It is like a knife, & she barefoot inside it
+++
TIME STANDS IN PIECES LIKE A FOREST
TO BE CHOPPED
seven of wands
The drug makes little marathons in her veins.
Soul lands like a paper airplane in damp violets.
Once Liberty says someone invented happiness, like the angels
light hands, or the heros paperthin ego.
Hormones & the will of god—. A ribbon she says. A leaf—.
We had evolved. A child had died.
This was in real time. A fish is sailing out of sight, & will not close
its eyes.
Her skirt hitches, neon shines through.
Piecemeal, & in the third person…
Bronze fibula, a match. Her bright tattoos, & in nanoseconds.
You know what I’m saying.
You dont think you should praise her somehow you should let her
go—.
+++
HANGNAIL
eight
of cups
You stand without shadows on asphalt at midday—.
As if love were a periodic table or the kind of story people simply
could not tell…
There is hope in the landscape & passion in the children—.
Crazy: as her kind were supposed to be.
The sun bleeds on pale diners behind cellophane—. Oxygen &
hydrogen gather to be somewhere else—. Coke & orange float in
styrofoam—.
A housecat gnaws fine bones—.
Love exists to end up in a book—. (Oh you!)
(You now : now you.)
Small butterflies wobble through terrible sweet heat—.
Childrens voices fall like rain, strung with fingers of clarity—.
Old men on benches fish the Milky Way—.
Liberty dreams of redemption but knows better than that too—.
(Did she really say such things? No: but, she might have.)
(Does it feel like that? Absolutely.)
+++
REPRODUCTIVE PHYSICS
knight of swords
On a hot bright Wednesday I need you think the truth & some
aspirin.
She is lying next to you: bone to bone.
An atom catches in her rib, her belly makes a sound like wish. The
long weekend of her hip tapers in your thigh.
She is dreaming shy phrases of blue smoke.
Window shards & cut apart trees. Abraham Lincoln on a
handtowel.
You take her hand light & cold go running through your arms.
From the inside out, pretend. Angels wash their underwear in the
river.
Sun fills the gin from the big window behind the sink.
There is no story yet, only raw elements.
Tiny crosses of rain, your fist: holding flowers or eighth notes,
bluegold clouds, a necklace made of
turquoise & pendant earrings. You were cheating. You had
cheated, you would cheat.
Love seems to you to be beautiful. Or, let me say: possible.
Yes, love seems possible. Carnal, & very precise. You turn your
head, & can no longer see the children in the trees. That is the
fairytale, & now you can no longer tell the difference.